Well horsefeathers.....

Turns out a lot happened in Russia after the turn of the Twentieth Century, and our heroes Stan and Nemo were caught in the maelstrom. This week Dan and Patrick are talking about Chapter 4 of Isaac Butler's The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act. But it's a dense chapter, lots of scene-setting to set about, so we dive on in headfirst to the development of Mister Stan's theories about the SUBCONSCIOUS and the SUPERCONSCIOUS.

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Follow The Actors Bookshelf on Twitter @actorsbookshelf and Bluesky @theactorsbookshelf

Follow Patrick on Instagram @dfwpadraig

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Questions? Comments? Email us at actorsbookshelfpod@gmail.com

We did it. We caught up the chapters with our episode numbers. We all lived happily ever after, in Moscow, with Trigorin, and the Cherry Orchard is continuing to bring us residual income. Huzzah.

This week Dan and Patrick talk about Chapters 2 and 3 of Isaac Butler's The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act. We'll cover some of the early productions of the Moscow Art Theatre (originally the Moscow Open Art Theatre), headaches, trials, tribulations, and successes, and the rudiments of what would become Stanislavski's "system" for actors. We also talk about a little play by Anton Chekhov that would place him among the titans of the dramatic canon like William Shakespeare, Lillian Hellman, and Tommy Wiseau.

Episode art is taken from the 1898 Moscow Art Theatre production of The Seagull, directed by Konstantin Stanislavski & Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko. Pictured are an unknown performer as Yakov, Vasily Luzhsky as Sorin, Vsevolod Meyerhold as Treplev, Olga Knipper Chekhova as Arkadina, Konstantin Stanislavski as Trigorin, and Maria Alekseyeva as Masha.

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Follow The Actors Bookshelf on Twitter @actorsbookshelf and Bluesky @theactorsbookshelf

Follow Patrick on Instagram @dfwpadraig

Follow Dan on Instagram @the.other.dan.stevens

Questions? Comments? Email us at actorsbookshelfpod@gmail.com

Oh no. We're spending Episode 2 looking at Chapter 1. This can only end in tears.

In Chapter 1 of Isaac Butler's bookThe Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act, we meet our heroes Konstantin Stanislavski and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, theatre artists hungry for new forms and eager to form a partnership. We talk about finding the art in yourself and other such nonsense, and the origin of a phrase that has been drilled into actors for the last hundred years now.

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Media mentions in this episode:

Andrei Rublev (dir. Andrei Tarkovsky) – https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060107/

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Follow The Actors Bookshelf on Twitter @actorsbookshelf and Bluesky @theactorsbookshelf

Follow Patrick on Instagram @dfwpadraig

Follow Dan on Instagram @the.other.dan.stevens

Questions? Comments? Email us at actorsbookshelfpod@gmail.com

It's our first full episode, and today we're diving headfirst into the ur text for our podcasting project, The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act, written by Isaac Butler and published by Bloomsbury Publishing.

The Method is a thorough investigation of both the correct and incorrect attributions of the teachings of Konstantin Stanislavski as they've been filtered down through his students and acolytes in Russia and later Western Europe and the United States.

And yeah, the introduction is just as compelling read as the rest of the book, so let's start at the beginning!

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Media mentions in this episode:

Blood Simple (dir. Joel & Ethan Coen) – https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086979

Nora (dir. Carrie Cracknell) – https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2463886/

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Follow The Actors Bookshelf on Twitter @actorsbookshelf and Bluesky @theactorsbookshelf

Follow Patrick on Instagram @dfwpadraig

Follow Dan on Instagram @the.other.dan.stevens

Questions? Comments? Email us at actorsbookshelfpod@gmail.com

You made it! Make yourself comfortable.

Welcome to the show where we go deep into the books we were supposed to have read in acting school. Some you've heard about. Some you've maybe not heard about.

We're here to build a community and have some good long-form discussions about how we do what we do. We'll talk to other actors, directors, teachers, and theatre practitioners about what works great, what works less great, and what we'd like to see in the future.

We're glad you're here. We love you.

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Follow The Actors Bookshelf on Twitter @actorsbookshelf and Bluesky @theactorsbookshelf

Follow Patrick on Instagram @dfwpadraig

Follow Dan on Instagram @the.other.dan.stevens

Questions? Comments? Email us at actorsbookshelfpod@gmail.com